Day 24 was another overcast day, but luckily it didn't rain on us too much. We started off the day by going to spy in Hverir geothermal area. We had driven by here the day before and I wanted to stop because it looks so fun! But there were a ton of people all over and Raymond was like we should just wait till tomorrow. We were there early which was nice as there were not many other people there yet so Raymond was right!
This was a lot of fun to wander around, though I tried to stay out of the steam as much as possible as the smell was making me sick. We had been to so many geothermal areas and never had an issue, but for some reason the steam here was worse than normal.
Next we drove back to Grjótagjá to walk through the lava fields from there to Hverfjall crater
This was a really nice walk. The path was like wet sand, easy to walk on and super soft on the feet.
This crater was giant! It wasn't until we got over to it that I realized exactly how big it was! A sign said it is one of the biggest tuff craters in the world!
We walked up to the rim (.5km)
Then around the rim in a circle which was 3.3km long! That is much longer than any other crater we went to
It was also a lot of fun because it was so much different from all the other craters we had seen.
Plus the views were gorgeous!
You could really see so far from the rim!
This was a lot of fun, though it was so windy and freezing cold walking around the rim! The last stretch was so so so cold! Fortunately once you got back down to the ground there was not so much wind and it was much warmer.
When we got back to the car we noticed some people going farther down the path by the caves so we went to spy. There is one smaller cave down there, but you cannot go in (this photo is taken through the metal door slats)
Next up was Dimmuborgir - an area with lots of lava pillars to wander through
This was...not as fun as I expected. It was fine, but nothing special. We were going to walk the longer loop, but partway through decided against it as it was just meh. Interesting how they formed, but...plus it started raining and well we didn't care enough to get soaked. Plus the trails here, like a lot of places in Iceland, were marked by location. On the map we looked at they had different colored trails - red, yellow, etc so we decided on which color to follow...only the trail markers had no colors only names. Which sure, we could have taken a photo of the map and referred to it every time to see which way we needed to go (if we really wanted to wander through we would have), but I was always like why have a color-coded map if your trails are not color-coded?
I thought the views were much nicer from the viewpoint at the parking lot than wandering through.
Since we were meh on Dimmuborgir we headed down the road to spy on Höfði promontory to see what we could see. From the parking lot this looks meh too, but it was actually super nice! Lots of woods to walk through
With lots of viewpoints to wander out to and spy on the surrounding area
The water was really nice
And we found this weird fungus! We looked it up later and it is a Phaeotremellaceae or "jelly fungi" since it is gelatinous. I've never seen something like this! When trying to figure it out I did a reverse image search and found someone else took this same photo earlier this same day and asked if anyone knew what it was on inaturalist.org site! I was not the only one who wanted to know more about it
We also saw this parking spot just down the road while we were wandering so we went to check it out once we got back to the car
And wandered through some more lava. This spot was way more popular than Höfði, lots of people stopped to take photos, but Höfði was way more fun! We saw so many people pull into the parking lot for Höfði then decide against getting out which they missed out!
Then it was back to Hlíð ferðaþjónusta camp for another early day. You can see the crater Hverfjall in the distance there!
A great day, lots of walking even though we got back to camp early. Walked 17.1km total
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